All the reserved park-and-ride spaces at Tuscany LRT have been snapped up before the station opens — and, more importantly for neighbours, before out-of-towners could snag them.

CTrains begin running Monday to the new terminal station for the northwest line. It comes with 572 parking spots, though no exit ramps from Crowchild Trail, so motorists must snake through Tuscany or Rocky Ridge to get to the twin lots.

For the first time, Calgary Transit offered all 286 parking reservations to residents of the adjacent neighbourhoods, in part because of community leaders’ worries of a crush of drivers from the town of Cochrane filling their roads.

Councillors and community members alike have long fretted that residents of Okotoks, Cochrane and other outlying towns have equal access to LRT parking, despite the fact they don’t pay the Calgary taxes that subsidize the transit and road networks.

About eight to 10 per cent of CTrain parking is used by non-Calgarians, according to city estimates. And a smaller proportion of train users rely on the vehicle lots, rather than walking, cycling or taking buses to the train platforms.

After years of consultation during the Tuscany station’s development, officials nixed the normal free-free-for-all for the one-half of parking stalls that can be secured for $70 a month. Calgary Transit instead recruited parking reservations through community newsletters in Tuscany, Rocky Ridge and Royal Oak, as well as by contacting locals on the waiting lists for parking at other northwest LRT lots.

“There’s enough of them that they’ve snapped up all the reserved parking,” said transit planning manager Neil McKendrick.

About 500 motorists sit on the waiting lists for guaranteed stalls at the Tuscany lot. It’s a number likely to grow, considering the queues at other stations at line’s end: 69th Street (2,930), Somerset-Bridlewood (1,839), and Crowfoot (1,491).

However, while the Tuscany station will be closest to Cochrane as the crow flies, it’s not really as the car drives. Crowfoot station sits about 21 kilometres away straight down the highway, roughly the same distance as the north-then-east-then-south circuit through Rocky Ridge via Crowchild Trail and 12 Mile Coulee, then through three roads in the heart of the community.

“The assumption is the Cochrane commuters travelling eastbound on Crowchild would use Crowfoot station versus shortcutting,” said David Klym, the community association’s transportation director.

But he predicts many users will be tempted to try the Tuscany lots, in hopes of better chances at finding a seat for the ride downtown.

Increased traffic is a near-constant concern in Calgary neighbourhoods when a new development or project opens. With Tuscany LRT, the city made the lots smaller than Crowfoot’s to encourage drivers to head farther down the line. cut-through traffic, and also added abundant bike lockers and extended the regional pathways to the station. The city chose not to apply residential parking permit zones ahead of the LRT station’s opening, though Klym said residents worry about an inundation of transit visitors using spillover parking on nearby streets.

Eileen Clark, who sat on a consultation committee for the LRT extension, thinks the Rocky Ridge route will be popular for Cochrane residents at the start, but they’ll learn it’s a slower route.

“There’s always going to be those people who want what they think is the shorter trip, breaking through our community,” she said.

Unlike for most Calgarians, Cochrane residents have no other way of getting to the train platform other than their cars. Their alternative is driving all the way into downtown or their other daily destinations, using up more of Calgary’s congested roads.

“It’s really the only way we can intercept people from out of town,” McKendrick said.

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